Chapter one. Building patronage and institutions, 1750-1830. $t Benjamin West: a new world genius conquers the old -- John Singleton Copley: ambition and practicality -- John Adams on the arts -- Charles Wilson Peale's museum -- John Trumbull paints Revolutionary history -- $g A plan for governing patronage of history painting -- The National Academy of Design: the founding -- William Dunlap champions the arts -- Thomas Cole and a patron -- For the birds: John James Audubon and American nature -- Chapter two. Landscape, democracy, race, 1830-1850. Horatio Greenough's George Washington -- Thomas Cole and the American landscape -- -- Responses to daguerreotype -- George Catlin portrays the Native Americas -- The Public display of slavery -- Frederick Douglass on African American portraiture -- Washington Allston in Boston -- Hiram Power's The Greek Slave -- The American Art-Union -- Düsseldorf and the Düsseldoerf Gallery --
Chapter three. The Civil War and its aftermath, 1850-1870. Lily Martin Spencer: making it in New York -- Asher B. Durand formulates the American landscape -- The lure of Italy -- Harriet Hosmer in the Eternal City -- Frederic Church's Heart of the Andes -- Eastman Johnson's Negro Life at the South -- The photograph and the face -- Photographs of Antietam -- John Quincey Adams Ward's Freedman -- Albert Bierstadt's great picture -- The Nation versus Prang and Company -- Sculpture in midcentry America -- Chapter four. The Gilded Age, 1870-1885. Thomas Moran and the Western Sublime -- J. Alden Weir writes home about Jean-Léon Gérôme -- Henry James reviews some American painters -- Thomas Eakins in Spain -- Thomas Eakins's The Gross Clinic -- Eakins and the School of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts -- Young Turks: the formation of the Society of American Artists -- The Munich School -- Otto Bacher on Whistler in Venice -- Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer assesses the progress of American art -- Winslow Homer's sea change -- Friedrich Pecht: a German critic on American art -- Sylvester Koehler reflects on a decade of American art --
Chapter five. A new internationalism, 1885-1900. William Harnett's The Old Violin -- Kenyon Cox's lonely campaign for the nude -- James McNeill Whistler's platform -- William Merritt Chase, seeing machine -- Albert Pinkham Ryder: the myth of the Romantic Primitive -- Childe Hassam on painting street scenes -- Marry Cassatt, modern woman -- Experiencing the World's Columbian Exposition -- Should women artists marry? -- Cecilia Beaux: becoming the greatest woman painter -- Booker T. Washington on Henry Ossawa Tanner -- Alfred Stieglitz on Pictoralism -- Chapter six. Progressivism and modernism, 1900-1918. John Sloan on the life of an artist in New York -- Lewis Hine: social justice through photography -- The Making of a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz -- Robert Henri advocates individuality and freedom in art education -- Alfred Stieglitz and John Marin introducing Modernism at the Armory Show -- Kenyon Cox: the case against Modernism -- Theodore Roosevelt offers a layman's view of Modern Art -- Explanatory notes from the Modernists -- Marcel Duchamp surveys New York -- Duchamp, with the help of Louise Norton and Beatrice Wood, defends his infamous Readymade --
Chapter seven. Prosperity and Depression, 1918-1939. Georgia O'Keefe paints as she wants to -- Joseph Stella on the divine and the demonic in the modern city -- Edward Hopper finds kindred spirits in John Sloan and Charles Burchfield -- George Schuyler and Langston Hughes propose different paths for African American culture -- Romare Bearden and Aaron Douglas: the situation of African American artists -- Putting artists to work during the Depression -- Dorothea Lange on documentary photography -- Thomas Hart Benton and the US scene -- Swinging abstraction: Stuart Davis -- A voice of radical cultural politics in the 1930s -- Meyer Schapiro's critical analysis of Modern Art -- Norman Bel Geddes streamlines design -- Life Magazine and the demand for pictures -- Chapter eight. War and Cold War, anxiety and affluence, 1939-1960. Norman Rockwell brings the four freedoms to life -- Jackson Pollock remakes Abstraction -- Mark Rothko: agitation and calm -- Barnett Newman declares space -- Clement Greenberg identifies an American Avant-Garde -- Harold Rosenberg defines Action Painting -- Confrontation pieces by Louise Bourgeois -- Berenice Abbott: documentary photography in a world of pictures -- Oscar Howe on creative freedom and Native American traditions -- Walker Evans and Robert Frank on Frank's Americans -- Robert Rauschenberg's disparate visual facts -- John Cage on Robert Rauschenberg's Combines -- Jasper Johns seeing and knowing -- US painting and the Cold War --
Chapter nine. Political polarization, counterculture and reaction, 1960-1980. Allan Kaprow and happenings -- Claes Oldenburg: an art of bending, kicking, and breaking -- Roy Lichtenstein: capitalism, industrialism, and Pop Art -- Andy Warhol on Pop Art and homosexuality -- Carolee Schneemann and Aphroditean performance -- Frank Stella and Donald Judd: unbroken wholeness -- Robert Morris: physical evidence of the visual field -- Michael Fried's objections to Minimalism -- A manifesto for Conceptual Art: Sol LeWitt's paragraphs -- Artists organize to demand rights and reforms -- Emory Douglas, The Black Panther Party, and Revolutionary art -- AfriCOBRA pursues the cultural liberation of Black America -- Robert Smithson reshapes land -- Judy Chicago's feminist imagery -- The Art of Light and Space in Los Angeles -- Adrian Piper's philosophical and engaged Conceptual Art -- Analyzing pictures culture through art -- Chapter ten. Culture wars and postmodernism, 1980-2000. Martha Rosler: social documentary photography versus appropriation -- Cindy Sherman, pictures and identities -- Maya Lin's memorials -- Hans Haacke and the critique of arts institutions -- Jean-Michel Basquiat's raw and subtle graffiti -- David Hammons: defiant Street Art -- Robert Mapplethorpe's embattled photographs -- Inciting action through art to end the AIDS epidemic -- Coco Fusco performing Otherness -- Fred Wilson exhibits suppressed histories -- Kara Walker: surreal, silhouetted panoramas of slavery -- Chronology 1500-2000
Summary:
This volume presents three centuries of US art through a broad array of historical texts, including writings by artists, critics, patrons, literary figures, and other commentators. Combining a wide-ranging selection of texts with high-quality reproductions of artworks, it offers a unique resource for the study and understanding of the visual arts of the United States. With contextual essays, explanatory headnotes, a chronology of historical landmarks, maps, and full-color illustrations of key artworks, the volume will appeal to national and international audiences ranging from undergraduates and museum visitors to art historians and other scholars. Texts by a range of artists and cultural figures-from Benjamin West to Kara Walker-are grouped according to historical era alongside works by many of the artists featured. This sourcebook brings together multiple voices throughout the ages to provide a framework for learning and critical thinking on US art. --From publisher description
